


Heirs to the Glimmering World

by Mosca



Category: Divergent (Movies), Divergent - All Media Types, Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Time, M/M, Outdoor Sex, Shower Sex, Villains to Heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 22:44:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15650424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: An alternative history of the fall of dystopia, in seven parts, because hero’s journeys are for Stiffs.





	Heirs to the Glimmering World

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this in 2015 and have finally figured out how to finish it. It draws about equally from the novels and from the movie adaptations, on the grounds that both have serious worldbuilding problems, but not the same problems.
> 
> This story contains: explicit sex between two people who might be just shy of 18 because the canon timeline is foggy, a sexual act performed in exchange for a service, discussion of off-screen character death including the deaths of parents, canon-consistent violence, discussion of homophobic and biphobic bullying as well as institutionalized homophobia, improvised lubricants, and protagonists who are pretty terrible people. I mean, it’s a dystopian universe, what do you want?
> 
> Thanks to Lovessong for going back and beta reading this once a year for the past three years, whenever I made progress, and for reminding me in between that I was sure to finish it someday.
> 
> The title is from "The Geese of Beverly Road," because Sandyk made a pact that every fic we post during 2018 will take its title from a song by The National.

**1\. Amity**

Caleb chewed his roasted corn and watched for signs that Peter had been leering at him since they’d come to Amity, contrary to Beatrice’s reassurances that Peter looked that way at everybody. Beatrice and Four ignored Caleb, lost in romance and revolutionary plotting. Peter, with his Dauntless restlessness, must have been even more bored than Caleb. Certain of his sister’s obliviousness, Caleb hissed at Peter, “What do you _want?_ ”

Peter literally winked. It might not even have been ironic. 

Caleb strolled into the orchard after dinner, desperate for solitude. He couldn’t stand another evening of communal singing and hoped to wander far enough away to avoid being herded into the Dome. He heard footsteps behind him but feigned selective deafness until the other person had come so close that Caleb could hear him breathing. Caleb wasn’t sure whether he feared physical assault more than aggressive kindness. Caleb pivoted, not believing he could defend himself against either.

It was just Peter. Caleb sighed with relief. Before he could remind himself to put his guard back up, Peter kissed him, stabbing his mouth with rough tongue. Caleb knew he should shove Peter away, but he’d been admiring Peter’s lean frame and round butt, perfectly sculpted in whatever barbaric exercises constituted a Dauntless education. Caleb’s own long hours of study and competitive problem-solving had left little time for romance, especially since he’d verified once and for all, after an awkward evening in the dorms, that girls did not have the expected effect on him. Finding a boy who wanted to kiss him - who initiated, no less - was the realization of countless lonesome fantasies. Caleb shoved his tongue into Peter’s mouth and clutched at his hair, desperate to feel as much as he could before Peter changed his mind.

Peter rolled Caleb into the soft dirt, a move more suited to combat than intimacy, but adapted to the purpose, gentle. Finally able to speak, Caleb said, “This isn’t some kind of joke, is it?”

“I don’t know if it’s the fresh air or the vegetables or what, but I’m horny as fuck,” Peter said. “I tried it with a few Amity girls, but they don’t put out until you get to know them. And then you shot me that look at dinner, and I thought, if nothing else, it’ll piss Tris the hell off.”

“So this is about revenge on my sister?”

“That’s more of a perk.” Peter stroked Caleb’s face, almost tenderly. “You definitely got the looks in the family.”

“You too,” Caleb said. “Or, well, you know what I mean.”

Peter’s laugh sounded sinister even when Caleb didn’t think he intended any harm. Peter shook something out from under his shirt. “Are you a virgin?”

“Well, I -”

“Fantastic,” Peter said. He brandished the object he’d been hiding, a little earthenware dish with a snap-on lid, filled with butter. Before Caleb could ask what sort of cheap thrill Peter obtained from swiping leftovers, Peter explained, “So it won’t hurt so much. Although, trust me, it’ll still hurt. It’s the kind of pain that feels good, although I doubt they taught you about endorphins in the Ivory Tower.”

Caleb swallowed back his apprehension. “So it’s a lubricant. That’s… a pretty bright idea, actually.”

Peter ran both hands up Caleb’s shirt. “Keep complimenting me, and I’ll start thinking you want this because you like me, and not because you’re terrified of dying before you can get anyone to fuck you.”

“I’m not afraid,” Caleb said. “I just want to know how it feels.”

Peter’s eyes softened, and Caleb wasn’t sure what, in that simple statement, had altered him. But he accepted Peter’s kiss, demanding and wet, and he yielded when Peter rolled him onto his stomach. Caleb rocked back onto his knees to avoid breathing dirt, and Peter caught him, tugging and twisting him out of his shirt. Peter sucked on Caleb’s neck so hard Caleb could feel his skin bruise. He stifled a yelp, afraid Peter would storm away in disgust if he complained about the pain. 

Peter stopped for a moment, and Caleb drew in a breath, worrying Peter might abandon him here. But Peter’s hands returned, gripping Caleb’s ass, spreading the cheeks apart and stroking the delicate skin between them. He fumbled Caleb’s fly open and yanked his pants down to mid-thigh, making the low summer sun prickle warmth over Caleb’s exposed skin. Peter ground his hard, butter-slick cock between Caleb’s cheeks. “You want this all the way inside you, don’t you?” Peter said. “You have to tell me you want it.”

“I want it,” Caleb echoed.

“Say you want me to fuck you raw. Say _those words._ ” 

“I want you to fuck me raw,” Caleb said, feeling like he’d just learned a second language.

Peter shoved a few buttery fingers up Caleb’s ass. It felt pleasant at first, until Peter moved them around and brushed up against Caleb the right way. Caleb gasped, and Peter repeated the motion. “Please,” Caleb said. “More. Like that.” Each stroke went right to Caleb’s cock. It was the whole world, all he could feel. His balls tightened, and he wondered if he could come just from a couple of fingers inside him. A minute later, Caleb got his answer, the orgasm shooting through him like a honeyed knife.

Peter clawed Caleb’s back. “That’s a neat trick. You’re even more fun than I thought you’d be.”

“You still haven’t fucked me yet.” The post-coital hormones stretched Caleb’s voice into a lazy drawl. “Unless you have a really small, flexible penis.”

Peter seemed to take this not as an insult but as an invitation. He held Caleb open with his fingers and thrust inside as if making sure it would hurt. But with Caleb’s muscles stretched out and relaxed, and his body shooting itself up with calming hormones, Caleb felt the comforting heat of Peter’s skin more than the tearing force of his cock. He had assumed sex wouldn’t live up to his fantasies, at least not the first time, but being held and touched, being desired, exceeded his imagination. He begged Peter not to stop because when Peter was finished, he’d walk away.

Peter announced his orgasm with a triumphant shout, and he’d refastened his belt by the time Caleb rolled over. “Fuck me, are they still singing?” Peter said.

Caleb listened; they were, and he rolled his eyes.

“Want to see what’s out that way?” Peter pointed to the field of prairie wildflowers past the farmland.

“It sounds better than singing,” Caleb said. He’d barely gotten to his feet and thrown his shirt back on before Peter took off running, and his knees and lungs strained at what seemed like a casual trot for Peter. At a random point in the center of the wildflower field, Peter stopped and stripped naked, stretching his long limbs toward a sky striated with the loveliest phase of sunset. Caleb didn’t ask Peter why; he doubted there was a plan or rationale behind it. He sensed that he was expected to follow suit, but he held back, admiring Peter’s body. An unfinished narrative of tattoos made Peter look like the broken remnant of an ancient artifact, the blank spaces unrecorded and unknowable. A sword plunged down Peter’s thigh from hip to knee, its handle transforming into the head and foreclaws of a dragon that slithered up his side. A stylized rose, ringed with thorns, covered his heart.

“What are you thinking about?” Peter said.

“The thorns around your heart.”

Peter smiled sadly and trailed his fingers over the tattoo. He looked like he wanted to be held, but when Caleb tried to touch him, he said, “Come on, pretty boy,” and slid his hands under Caleb’s shirt. Caleb raised his arms so Peter could lift it off of him. 

“You know what I’ve never done?” Caleb said. “Watched a sunset naked in a field of wildflowers. And if we don’t do it now, when will we ever have the chance?”

Caleb watched Peter try not to laugh, and then give in, dragging them both backward into the grass before Caleb could take his pants or shoes off. Caleb undressed lying down, then curled against Peter’s body, head on his shoulder, legs crossed and tangled. The sun sank fast, giving way to brilliant moonlight and the flickers of lightning bugs.

“Why do we think we’re going to survive this?” Caleb said.

“Because we’re too pretty to die.” Peter kissed his cheek.

“No, it’s just - never mind, Beatrice looks at me like I’m damaged if I try to bring it up, I don’t know why _you’d_ care.”

“Because genuinely giving a shit about what you have to say will _really_ piss off your sister,” Peter said, quick and confident, like that had been the goal all along. That removed all question that Peter was using him, but then, Caleb was using Peter, too, and for similar purposes.

“A few days ago, both of my parents were alive,” Caleb said. “And I assumed they’d just keep being alive. And with all this other stuff, if I take the time to think about grieving for them, I’ll be so caught up I won’t make it. Even though - even though I wasn’t close to them. I was like a foundling child that they raised out of duty. We didn’t understand each other at all, and they resented that I went to Erudite, much more than Beatrice choosing Dauntless. But I miss them, and I don’t think I’m a weak person for missing them.”

“Tris told you you’re weak for missing your dead parents?” Peter said, like it was another item on his anti-Beatrice list. “Talk about projecting your fears onto other people.”

“It’s an Abnegation thing,” Caleb said. “Let go of what you can’t change, or you’re selfish. I suppose it works for them, but I can’t let go of anything I don’t understand.”

“So she’s Dauntless, you’re Erudite, and she’s enforcing bullshit Abnegation rules on both of you? Oh, right, because she’s crazy.”

“Divergent.” Caleb paused before deciding to add, “Also crazy.”

“You’re not even the only ones who lost their parents in the attack on Abnegation,” Peter said. “My mom was on the front lines, and someone took her out. It might have been friendly fire, I don’t know, all I saw was her body when I had to step over it.”

There was a good chance Peter was playing a manipulative game, but Caleb wanted the comforting lie. He squeezed Peter’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t know her that well,” Peter said. “She was young when she had me and didn’t know what to do with a kid, so the faction raised me, mostly.”

“She was still your mom,” Caleb said.

“Yeah. And she died not knowing who she was, not thinking for herself. Not _choosing_ to fight. That would have made her mad.”

“My mom went through her whole life hiding and died fighting,” Caleb said. “It’s like they should have switched.”

“Yeah, if things ever made sense. Or were fair. But people die, and it’s just stupid no matter what.”

They fell silent, and the summer wind whistled through the prairie grass like souls ascending. If Caleb was going to die tomorrow, he was going to touch a boy again tonight. He rolled onto his side and pulled Peter into a kiss. Peter hesitated, worrying Caleb for a moment before he hurled himself back in, tongue in Caleb’s mouth, fingertips pressing marks into Caleb’s back and arms. Caleb wanted to know what a cock felt like in his hand, so he groped down, finding it fragile and warm. Peter jerked into his hand, then squirmed. He took Caleb’s wrist, raised the palm to his mouth, licked it damp, and placed it back on his cock. 

Caleb felt powerful as Peter’s cock swelled in his hand, as Peter’s breath hitched and neck arched. He could have taken Beatrice’s revenge for her, taken advantage of Peter’s vulnerability to stun him with a knee to the groin and then strangle him to death. If he left Peter’s body here, no one would find it until morning. 

But Caleb had to believe that Peter wasn’t at all what Beatrice thought. He had to believe the beautiful boy coming enthusiastically into his hand was nobler than she had seen.

While Caleb was still sticky and lost in his own mind, Peter asked, “Do you want me to jerk you off or blow you?”

Caleb swallowed. “Both?”

Peter laughed and kissed him roughly. He clasped Caleb’s hand, which at first appeared to be a messy accident, except that he scooped as much out of Caleb’s palm as he could and reached down to stroke Caleb’s cock. Caleb ground his hips forward hard, his cock raging to life, bracing himself with fistfuls of sturdy grass. But when Peter slid down to take Caleb in his mouth, Caleb ripped the grass out by the roots. Caleb didn’t plan on dying tomorrow, but he would have felt sanguine if this were his last night on Earth, releasing all his fear into Peter’s warm, wet mouth. He came slower this time than in the orchard, and lasted longer, vestiges of pleasure lingering at the base of his cock and the small of his back after he came.

“We should get back,” Caleb said. “The last thing we need is Beatrice calling out a search party.”

They dug their clothes out of the tall grass and hiked back, saying little. Caleb linked arms with Peter and ran his hand down Peter’s forearm to lace their fingers together. Peter froze for a moment but accepted the gesture, at least until they came close enough to Amity to be seen. At that point, he dropped Caleb’s hand and jogged ahead, making a show of returning separately. Caleb couldn’t tell if this was the end of them, if there had ever been a “them.” But he’d gotten what he needed, what he hadn’t known to ask for.

**2\. Abnegation**

Tris shouldn’t have asked Peter why he was in such a good mood the next morning. If she hadn’t, he would have been able to hold the truth in, but once she brought it up, he couldn’t resist sticking it to her. They were up at dawn, collecting eggs into hay-lined baskets for breakfast, unsupervised together in the coop where they’d been assigned. Peter wondered what awful job they’d given Caleb. Amity seemed to distrust Erudite much more than Dauntless, and they were openly harder on Caleb than on anyone else. Peter would have spoken up if it hadn’t guaranteed him a whole day of shoveling horse shit, plus even harder work for Caleb. 

“The sun is shining,” Peter said. “Chickens are strangely hilarious. Had you ever seen a live one before? Dauntless isn’t exactly full of livestock, and here we are, surrounded by animals, doing animal stuff.”

She sneered at him like she couldn’t wait for him to shut up. Maybe if she’d forced a smile, he would have kept his secrets to himself.

Probably not. “Oh, and yesterday I fucked your brother.”

She almost dropped her basket. Peter imagined shattered eggshells and yolks soaking into the dried corncobs that lined the coop’s floor. It would have been fun to watch, but this was Amity, so he would have been responsible for cleaning it up. 

“Liar,” Tris said.

“It was his first time, too,” Peter said. “I don’t know why the Erudite boys weren’t lining up to shove their junk in his ass, but hey, more for me.”

“Caleb would never.” Tris’s knuckles whitened around the handle of her basket. “He doesn’t even - he isn’t _like_ that.”

“Just because he never talked with you about sex, doesn’t mean he doesn’t want it,” Peter said. “I guess he didn’t think you’d understand.”

“But he thought you would?” 

“It’s not like we had a heart-to-heart conversation,” Peter said. “We ditched the bonfire, met up in the apple orchard, and took our pants off.” 

Tris set down her basket and folded her arms across her chest, protecting herself instead of gearing up to punch Peter in the face. She must have wondered where they’d run off to, maybe worried. “You actually had sex with my brother.”

“No need to make up stories when the truth freaks you out this much,” Peter said. 

“Well, congratulations,” Tris said. “Now, do me a favor and stay away from him from now on.”

Peter plucked an egg from an unoccupied nest and held it up to a low slant of sunlight. “That’s up to him. He’s a big boy.” He dropped the egg softly into his basket like a fresh conquest. “Especially when he’s hard.”

Tris scowled at him one more time before going back to collecting eggs. It was her own fault for not guessing Peter would give it a shot. He’d built a reputation for fucking every guy in Dauntless who was even halfway curious, in addition to his fair share of girls. Eric had picked up on that, making it one of his favorite taunts in training. _Peter, keep doing push-ups until you admit you like sucking cock. Peter will like this one - I hear it feels like getting fucked in the ass, but he’d know better than me. Peter, better pair up with a girl, wouldn’t want anything to come up unexpectedly while you’re wrestling._ Peter had come to appreciate the torment in his initiation test. He hadn’t feared being found out anymore, had stopped being afraid of wanting what he wanted and getting it. 

For the rest of the morning, Tris avoided Peter coolly but didn’t confront him. He doubted she was over it, just aware that if she blew up at him, they’d all get kicked out of Amity. At lunchtime, he sat down with a group of Amity kids instead of with his fellow fugitives, making noise about trying to fit in. They were polite, as always, but he could tell they looked down on him, distrusted him, saw him as a landmine waiting to rip their limbs off in an explosion.

Amity followed lunch with a two-hour siesta that bored Peter half to death. Some Amity used it for quiet reflection, others for relaxing with friends. But on his first day in Amity, desperate to keep himself busy so he wouldn’t lose his mind, Peter had figured out that siesta was sex time, and boy, was Amity not shy about it. Couples went at it in hammocks in the sprawling dormitories, surrounded by neighbors who chatted or even meditated. 

Peter helped clean the dining area after lunch until he caught Caleb’s eye. They snuck off together to a root cellar beneath one of the dormitory buildings, cool and dark, private. Caleb kissed Peter as soon as he’d shut the door behind them, shy and intense, as if Peter’s mouth were his whole world, and even the rest of Peter’s body didn’t exist. Just as Peter was getting excited about how tight Caleb’s ass would feel around his cock, Caleb broke off the kiss and backed away to sit on a crate. Peter hung his head, rejected, but Caleb motioned for him to sit by his side. “I thought we should make time to talk first,” Caleb said. “Because once we get going, I won’t want to stop.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Peter had enjoyed the part of the night before when they’d lain naked in the grass and shaken all the fear and grief out of their heads, but he’d shared enough feelings to last him a while. 

“How long until the Dauntless troops make it here to look for us, do you think?” Caleb said. 

Peter had to admit it was a good question, a problem worth getting out of the way. “They’ll circle outward. Depending on how thorough they’re being, they could show up any minute. But I doubt we have more than a day.”

“Yeah, that’s what Beatrice and Four were saying,” Caleb said. “They want to head out toward the woods at the edge of the Wall when the search party comes. But the smart thing to do would be to hop a train back toward the city, where they’ve already looked.”

“Not that either of them has much interest in the smart thing.”

“I tried to bring it up,” Caleb said, “but they don’t really see me as a member of the team, so much as a princess they need to keep on saving.”

“So you’re looking for a side deal? A way to ditch them?” The thought of double-crossing Tris and Four was too delightful to pass up. Peter had tried to come up with a way to do it on his own, but every idea he had was a two-person job.

“I’m looking for someone who might see reason,” Caleb said. “Too bad you’re my only option.” Caleb kissed Peter’s cheek, although Peter would have known anyway that Caleb’s teasing was affectionate.

“What did you have in mind?”

“They’re going to catch up with us eventually,” Caleb said. “Even if we escape this time, the guards outnumber us and are much more ruthless than we are, which means the longer we keep running, the more likely we are to get killed. Which doesn’t really accomplish anything, if the goal is to rebel.”

“So, we do what? Turn ourselves over to the guards?”

“We surrender, which will take us back inside Erudite,” Caleb said. 

“Not both of us,” Peter said. “They’ll know we’re up to something. As much as it kills me to say this, I should stay with Tris and Four. Erudite will welcome you back with open arms, but who knows what they’ll do to me?”

“Use you for information,” Caleb said, utterly certain.

“And when I don’t give them any?”

“No need to find out,” Caleb said. “Cooperate. Tell them everything you know, but mix in enough lies that they won’t be able to use any of it. Get them to place you in the Dauntless guard that protects the tower, if you can. I’ll turn myself in a few days after you do, as soon as I can without making it look like we’ve conspired.”

“And then?”

“And then you’ll have had some time to sneak around the tower and ingratiate yourself, and you can tell me what we do next,” Caleb said.

Peter had a good feeling about this. It might have come from Caleb’s trust in him, or simply from the fact that it was a solid plan, acknowledging both of their strengths, open-ended at the point where they could no longer predict the best next move. And of course, if Peter changed his mind, he could always stab Caleb in the back. “I’m in,” Peter said. He sealed it with a kiss. And then a blow job. And then more kissing, because Peter had never before spoken this much to somebody and still wanted to kiss them. He clung to the excuse that Caleb had a beautiful mouth, and his sister’s rage was entertaining, but he could tell he was going to have to let go soon. Let go, fall, and see where he landed.

The Dauntless search team caught up with them that night at dusk, plowing down fences and farmland with their armored tanks. Less than an hour earlier, Tris had lost her temper and overturned a table at Peter. He wasn’t sure what he’d said; it hadn’t been all that witty. But then, part of the fun of taunting Tris had always been that he never knew what was going to set her off. With most people, Peter could find one or two old wounds and reopen them, but Tris was a mess of small traumas and defense mechanisms. He liked to think he was doing her a favor. If she was going to lead an insurrection and bring down the factions, she needed to patch those cracks up. Not that he expected her to thank him. The look on her face was usually its own reward, anyway.

From the Amity leader’s office, Peter heard Eric’s voice below, shouting and shoving his way in. “We need to split up,” Four said.

“Every man for himself?” Peter looked past Four to make eye contact with Caleb, who nodded subtly. He longed for one last kiss, but he’d have to make do with that nod. Peter wheeled around and dashed to the top of the stairs. “They’re up here! They’re getting away!” He made a giant, smirking show of holding up his hands, stalling the guards just long enough for the other three to dive out the window and head for the woods.

Peter expected Eric to rough him up, but Eric handcuffed him with no excess violence and led him to one of the tanks. As he loaded Peter into the backseat, he patted Peter’s shoulder with brotherly affection. “I have to admit, this whole rebellion thing was ballsy,” Eric said. “Stupid, but ballsy.”

Peter absorbed the compliment, stone-faced. “You’re wasting time.”

“I thought I’d give them a little head start,” Eric said. “This will be so much more fun if they think they have a chance.” Peter considered for a moment that Eric’s loyalty could be wavering, but Eric had never been smart enough for that.

Eric slammed the tank’s door and shouted rapid, inaudible instructions to the driver. The dilapidated streets made Peter’s jaw rattle. The ruins of ancient buildings preserved the outline of a path as old as the city. They passed beneath a corroded archway, its old steel shaped into the words “Lincoln Square,” and under the rotted girders of a disused L track. The city, and the world, had been so much bigger once. 

The tank pulled up to the Erudite tower’s secret back entrance, and a team of guards marched Peter inside. Their uniforms were Erudite blue and black, but their well-toned bodies and the edges of tattoos revealed them as Dauntless. If the whole world hadn’t just gone to hell, Peter might have joined a guardian force like this one. If Caleb’s plan played out perfectly, he still could.

Peter expected to be thrown in a cell for a while, but the guards brought him directly to Jeanine. Although he was much taller than her, she seemed to tower over him. If she was trying to instill fear, she had the wrong guy. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” he said, trying to maintain his calm, but the words came out rushed and desperate. “I’ll tell you everything. I only joined up with them to betray them later. To make sure they get what’s coming to them.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Jeanine said. “I’m also sure you’re an opportunist with no allegiance to anyone. So here’s how we keep you honest. You give me accurate information that leads to Beatrice Prior’s apprehension, and I don’t tell anyone you were supposed to live under my roof in the first place.”

Faction placement test results were sealed and nonbinding, but of course Jeanine had found a way to take a peek at Peter’s anyway. “The test was wrong,” Peter said. “I’m Dauntless. That’s where I always belonged. I finished at the top of my initiation group.”

“Divergents have a way of doing that.” Her voice felt like cold water dripping slowly on the back of his neck, and her smile was pure, clear ice. “They didn’t tell you, of course. The testers have an unspoken policy of sweeping Divergent results under the rug, especially when the subjects are close to normal. You probably aren’t more than ten or twenty percent, which means you’re more useful to me as a spy than -” She paused, the first break in her composure, seeming to censor herself. “Than dead or imprisoned.”

“I’m not.” Peter’s voice shook. He wished this scene had come up in his initiation test so he could have overcome it long ago. But this fear, this possibility, had never occurred to him. “The test was wrong.”

“That does happen,” Jeanine said. “But the mind control program is an extremely reliable indicator. Only Divergents are immune to its effects.”

“They chose me to stay awake and lead a team,” Peter said.

Jeanine shook her head. “They never would have given that responsibility to someone so young.”

There was no point in arguing with her, especially now that the evidence was mounting. He needed to turn this fear, this reality, into strength. “I’ll tell you everything,” he said. “I’ll give you everything you need to take Tris down.”

**3\. Candor**

Beatrice and Four got Caleb and themselves safely to the Factionless camp, only to start a pointless argument and get kicked back out before Caleb could even finish his warm meal and good night’s sleep. The Factionless here looked busy and secure, not the desperate souls described in Abnegation community meetings. He suspected that Abnegation had needed the Factionless, and the myth of their suffering, at least as much as the Factionless had needed their care and sacrifice. 

Trapped in the Factionless camp, Caleb was no use to anyone, himself included. He gathered his strength and approached the leader of the Factionless group they’d battled on the way out of Amity. “I’ll suck your cock if you help me get to Erudite,” Caleb said.

The Factionless grinned, gap-toothed; he was cute in a rough, damaged way. Before Caleb could fully contemplate the course of antibiotics he’d need when he got to the Tower, the Factionless led him to a secluded alcove and produced a condom from his pocket. There was no kissing or touching: this was a transaction. Still, Caleb did his best to make the guy feel good, to keep up his end of the deal.

As Caleb rose to his feet, the guy placed a kind hand on his shoulder. “I’m Edgar,” he said.

“Caleb.” A handshake seemed awkward, so Caleb shoved his hands in his pockets.

“I know,” Edgar said. “I was Abnegation for a while. Failed my initiation, wound up here.”

“I’m sorry,” Caleb said.

“Don’t be,” Edgar said. “I’d be dead if they hadn’t kicked me out, wouldn’t I? Anyway, I can’t get rid of that selflessness instinct. They drill it into you pretty hard. So don’t worry about getting to the Tower safely.”

Within a few hours, an armed escort of Factionless accompanied Caleb on a train to Erudite. “Good luck, kid,” Edgar said as he and his friends tossed Caleb onto the Tower’s doorstep. As soon as Caleb passed through the scanner archway, the guards were upon him, wrestling him to the ground and zip-tying his wrists behind him even though he tried to announce his surrender. They brought Caleb to a windowless gray room with a metal table and left him there alone. Caleb lay face-down on the hard floor and daydreamed of Peter, wishing he could reach out with the power of his mind. He wondered if Peter was even here, although he couldn’t imagine where else Peter could have wound up, unless he was dead. And that was a possibility that Caleb was strangely reluctant to entertain.

Caleb had almost fallen asleep when a man in a stark suit entered the room. “You must be exhausted,” the man said as he snipped the zip ties from Caleb’s wrists. “You’ve been running for days, and unlike your companions, you’re not used to that kind of exertion.”

“I adapt quickly.” Caleb stretched as he sat up, adjusting his shoulders back into their sockets.

The man sat in one chair and motioned for Caleb to take the seat opposite him. “I’m Louis,” he said. “I’m told you have some information to share.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with the locations of the remaining fugitives,” Louis said. His direct, gentle demeanor made Caleb like him instinctively, and Caleb was sure that was the point.

“They said they were headed to Candor,” Caleb said. “I have no idea if they made it, or if they were allowed inside.”

“Why Candor?”

“It’s the only faction they hadn’t been to yet,” Caleb said. “To be honest, I don’t think they thought it through very carefully. I tried to get them to strategize and consider their options more systematically, but they didn’t have much interest in my opinions.” Caleb surprised himself with how easy it was to tell no lies and still skew his answers toward a narrative that would send his interrogators scurrying in circles.

“By ‘they,’ you mean whom?”

“Beatrice and Four,” Caleb said. “Tobias. That’s his real name, right?”

“But not your other companion, Peter?”

Caleb tried to make his laugh sound dismissive, not smitten, but he sensed a lapse in his performance. “He was more receptive, but only because he was playing both sides. _All_ the sides.”

“So you didn’t ally yourself with him at all?”

“I did,” Caleb said. “But I didn’t expect him to honor that alliance. I don’t think he trusted me very far, either.”

“Should he have trusted you?”

Caleb could see how Louis operated: Louis put words into Caleb’s mouth, under the guise of kindness, and it was Caleb’s responsibility to pull them back out by providing more details. “I doubt it,” Caleb said. “I feel some affection for him, but I have some loyalty toward my sister, too. And toward Erudite. I suppose I’m playing all the sides, too.”

Louis leaned over the metal table toward Caleb, and Caleb feared he’d stepped across an invisible line. “If your loyalties are so divided, how can you assure me that any of what you’ve said is the truth?”

“I can’t assure you. Not beyond doubt.” Caleb felt he was reciting Erudite precepts; he was glad to have paid attention during the long philosophical lectures that tested initiates’ endurance. “But I’m Erudite, and my commitment is to gaining and sharing knowledge. If I lie and get caught, you’ll restrict my movement and access. That will limit my ability to learn and understand, as well as yours. So I’m motivated to tell you what I know, and to be clear about it.”

Louis nodded, a smile playing on his lips, and patted Caleb’s arm. Caleb had passed an unspoken test. “Go ahead and catch your breath for a few minutes,” Louis said. “I’ll get you some water. Food, too, if I can convince the others. I don’t think I can let you out to use the bathroom, but I’ll see what I can do about that.”

Caleb lay back down on the floor, Now that his interrogation had become a series of tests rather than a sentence, his apprehension had lightened. Before he had time to formulate his next move, a guard brought him a bottle of water and a bucket to piss in. “Knock when you’re done,” the guard said. Caleb did as instructed, then traded his full bucket for a new inquisitor.

She was a sparrow of a girl, about Caleb’s age, with a few whimsical strands of curly hair falling loose from her tight chignon. Her name was Cara, and she’d been part of his initiation group. He wouldn’t have called her a friend, although they’d gotten along well when they’d collaborated on group tasks. 

“I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” Cara said.

“You’re right,” Caleb said. “You probably can’t.”

“So I guess we sit down, and I try to get information from you.” Either she was refreshingly unsure of herself, or she was playing her part well enough that Caleb couldn’t see all the way through it. “I watched what you said before, so maybe we can pick up from there. You mentioned that you advised your sister, but she dismissed your ideas. What did you advise her to do?”

“I tried to get her to lay low in Amity so we could blend in,” Caleb said. “She had a hard time holding her temper back. They were on the verge of kicking us out when the search party arrived. If she’d been more patient, we might have waited out the search and re-emerged when we had more control over our own situation.”

“That sounds logical to me,” Cara said, fidgeting in her stiff metal chair.

“It sounded cowardly to Beatrice.”

“I guess it would, if she’s Dauntless,” Cara said.

“A lot of what she says and does seems stupid to me, so I guess we’re even.” Caleb managed to laugh.

“I grew up in Dauntless,” Cara said. “I know just what you mean.”

Caleb had been aware of her origins, in the back of his mind, but the reminder opened an opportunity for him to reverse their roles, to gather some information from her. “So you knew Peter growing up?”

“Peter? No. He’s not from Dauntless. He must have been a transfer, like us.”

“Well, that’s one thing he lied to me about.” Caleb smiled; he hadn’t really wanted Peter’s tragic story to be true. He preferred the reality in which Peter was creative enough to spin a yarn that would win his heart.

“He’s here, you know. They assigned him to the tower guard,” Cara said.

“I’m looking forward to seeing him.” Caleb couldn’t hold back his rush of emotions, the blush in his cheeks and the hungry smile in the corners of his eyes.

Cara laughed darkly. “Even though he lied to you?”

“Especially because he lied to me,” Caleb said. 

“How so?”

“He lied to get my attention,” Caleb said. “He lied to get me to like him.”

Caleb could see Cara thinking about it, figuring it out. “That explains so much,” she said. “The first day of our orientation, the girls all agreed you were the hottest boy in the cohort. For months, we waited for you to choose one of us, because you would have had your pick. You could have gone through us one by one, and we wouldn’t have resented you. And when that didn’t happen, we agreed, maybe Caleb is just shy, maybe he doesn’t realize all the girls like him.”

Caleb hung his head; of course he’d known. He hadn’t identified Cara in particular as harboring a crush, but her friends had flirted, putting pressure on him until he felt nothing but the instinct to retreat. “But none of the boys?” he asked.

“If they did, they kept it to themselves,” Cara said. “Like you did.”

“I’m sorry,” Caleb said. “I should have played along, picked a girlfriend -”

“Oh, don’t get Stiff on me,” she said, her own upbringing coming out. “Nobody wanted you to fake straight for the greater good. We just wanted to understand.”

“It would have been okay here,” Caleb mused. “Or any faction except Abnegation. Here, it’s a fact of biology. In Candor it’s just the truth, in Amity they accept everyone, and in Dauntless, who gives a fuck. But in Abnegation, you hold it in, or you’re putting your own desires ahead of the common good.”

“Abnegation’s gone.” She reached out to cover his hand with hers, but she’d made a poor choice of words, and he jerked away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know.”

She played with her hair for a moment. The loose curls seemed to comfort and focus her, to provide just enough rebellion for her to function in Erudite. “Are you in love with him?”

Caleb remembered he was being interrogated, remembered to spin a tale. “We only had one day together. It was mostly physical.”

Cara smiled. “Dauntless boys are fun. A little scary, but fun.”

“I’m still getting used to that,” Caleb said. “Fun as a reason to do things.”

“Let me know if you need help with that. I’ll be around.” Cara tapped her ear as if someone was speaking into it, and she stood, frowning. Before she left, she hugged Caleb, and he let her.

Jeanine herself came in for the third round. She questioned Caleb perfunctorily, but he sensed that she didn’t expect to get any more from him. Just when Caleb thought he might be released, or at least left alone, a guard came in with a tray of food. Jeanine watched Caleb keenly while he uncovered it: scrambled eggs with cheese and green onions, slices of fresh tomato, cornbread with a pat of butter melting into its warm crust, strawberries drenched in cream and honey. Erudite had collected data on such apparent insignificances as his favorite foods.

Beatrice would have rejected the meal and hurled the tray in Jeanine’s face. Caleb imagined Jeanine with honey and cream dripping from her hair, picking egg out of her blouse. But he dug into his breakfast. His goal for the moment was liberation from this cell, and he thought more clearly with a full stomach.

“Peter cooperated immediately, you know,” Jeanine said. The heels of her shoes clicked on the hard floor. “There was no need to harm him.”

Erudite in general, and Jeanine specifically, seemed more fascinated with Peter than Caleb was. “I’m happy to hear that,” Caleb said with his mouth full.

“It’s odd,” Jeanine said, still pacing, looming over him. “When we ask about your sister, your answers line up. They’re consistent with what we know and consistent internally. But Peter - I can’t determine whether or not you’re allies, and whether or not you have feelings for him.”

“Peter is an opportunist,” Caleb said. “I wouldn’t trust him as an ally _or_ with my heart.”

“But you trusted him enough to have sex with him.” Jeanine glared down at Caleb. Something about his physical intimacy with Peter troubled her, or even frightened her, but Caleb assumed she’d never reveal why.

“It’s a different kind of trust,” Caleb said.

“I suppose it is, at that,” Jeanine said. She pursed her lips as if preparing one last eviscerating question, but drew in her breath, hoarding that question for herself. 

Her hesitation gave Caleb some room to maneuver. “There’s something I’m curious about,” he said.

Those were magic words in Erudite. “What’s that?”

“Peter’s mother,” Caleb said. “Is she alive?”

She furrowed her brow. “I don’t believe so. I can look it up for you.” She projected a console screen from her wrist and tapped through several layers of restricted databases. A woman’s face filled the cell wall opposite Caleb, along with a scrolling sidebar of information about her. Jeanine scanned through it more expertly than Caleb could. “Yes, she died about seven years ago. My, this is an extensive record. Candor really does disclose everything. She was censured a number of times for violating Faction principles - I’m surprised they didn’t throw her to the street, but she must have made it up to them. And then, here, cause of death. Self-inflicted. A shame. Is that what you wanted to know?”

It was more than he’d asked for, but in retrospect, exactly enough. He nodded.

“Enjoy your breakfast,” Jeanine said with an odd and malevolent warmth, like he’d passed another test, and she wasn’t happy about it. “When you’re finished, you’ll be escorted to your old room. Your movement through the Tower will be limited, but there’s no harm in allowing you familiar surroundings.”

“Thank you.” It occurred to Caleb that the food might be drugged with a sedative, truth serum, or mind-control device, but it was too late to prevent any chemical effects now. He wolfed down his breakfast so he could leave.

Peter, in a guard’s uniform, was waiting on the other side of the door; Caleb couldn’t say he was surprised. Peter didn’t greet Caleb or touch him until they reached Caleb’s old room, obviously aware than even the subtlest smile would have been logged and analyzed. But when they arrived, Peter watched as Caleb solved the simple spatial reasoning puzzle that served as a lock on Erudite doors, then followed him inside and closed the door with such surety of purpose that Caleb couldn’t tell if Peter was following orders or cockily defying them. Peter’s every move was like that, simultaneously compliant and rebellious. The whole point of the Faction system was to remove contradictions like those, but Peter seemed to thrive by manipulating it. People like him were the reason the system had broken, why it had never been sustainable in the first place.

And people like Caleb were the reason it had held together for so long. That made Peter his only chance at safety, at escape.

**4\. Erudite**

Caleb looked like he hadn’t slept since Amity and smelled like a Factionless who’d given up. Even if he hadn’t, Peter would have thrown him into the shower immediately, because Caleb’s room was bugged to the teeth, and running water would drown out their conversation. Also, Peter liked Caleb better when he was naked. Peter stripped first, to encourage him.

Caleb tossed his clothes into a corner of his bedroom like he hoped they’d decompose before he finished his shower. “The first hot shower I ever took was my first night in Erudite,” he said as he stepped under the warm spray. There wasn’t really enough water pressure to cover them both, so Peter endured the chill. Caleb went on, “In Abnegation, we washed ourselves in the kitchen in a big metal tub. Less wasteful, more humiliating, whatever the reasoning was. It took me about ten minutes to figure out how to work the knobs to get the water running. But when I was finished, the smell of the steam and the soap, I breathed it in, and all my homesickness just cut out, dead. One shower, and I knew I was never going back.”

There was a sponge hanging from a hook on the wall, and Peter pumped too much soap into it, so it became a ball of foam. He wanted Caleb to forget about that shower, to only think of him. He hesitated, not sure where to start, and Caleb took the sponge from him. Peter followed the path of soap, turning the shower head to spray it away and then kissing each clean place. Caleb picked up on the game quickly, scrubbing the same places over again, making Peter contort to reach the backs of his knees. As Peter scrambled to his feet - difficult on the slick tile - he saw how hard Caleb was just from being kissed, just from being near him. Nobody had ever wanted Peter like that. In Dauntless, people wanted the challenge, the orgasm, the danger. Caleb wanted to kiss Peter and say, “Why don’t you do the rest?” and put Peter’s hand on his cock before he gave Peter the sponge.

Peter knelt down intending to suck Caleb’s cock, but on the way down, he saw too many other parts he wanted the excuse to touch. He went to Caleb’s ass first, starting from his hips and working inward, not quite inside, but teasing that he might. He ran the sponge between Caleb’s legs instead, caressing Caleb’s balls with his soapy hands. Caleb gasped and braced himself on Peter’s shoulders, putting his nipples and armpits in reach. Caleb accepted it all too patiently. “Do you want me to make you come?” Peter said.

“Yeah,” Caleb said raggedly.

“How do you want me to do it?” With his mouth this close to Caleb’s cock, Peter was sure he knew the answer.

“Use the sponge,” Caleb said.

“Really?”

“You asked.” Caleb laughed. “It feels good.”

“All right,” Peter said. “But you need to let me suck it later.” 

He wrapped the sponge around Caleb’s cock before Caleb could answer with anything but moans and whimpers. It was a perfect jerking-off sponge, slick when it was soapy, just enough texture. If Caleb hadn’t been holding him down on his knees, he would have shared the sponge with him, grinding their cocks together inside the sponge’s groove. His cock twitched harder at the possibility. Peter controlled his breath, reminding himself that he’d get his turn soon. Caleb didn’t have that kind of restraint, and he crossed his line fast and forcefully, his come disappearing into the shower spray.

Peter had barely risen to his feet when Caleb pinned him to the back wall of the shower kissing him. Peter’s stomach clenched, and he squirmed free. He wasn’t afraid of being trapped in small spaces anymore, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. 

“Sorry,” Caleb said. After a day of interrogation, it looked like this might be the thing to break him. Peter wanted to be the twine and tape that could hold Caleb together, but he had no idea how.

“Just give me a little warning next time,” Peter said. “I don’t like being confined.”

Caleb kissed him again, more gently, leaving him space to escape. “I think I’m ready for bed, anyway.”

They dried each other off efficiently. Caleb paused for a moment before getting into bed, turning the covers back slowly, testing the pillow’s bounce. “The first night I slept in an Erudite bed, I couldn’t believe how soft it was.” He burrowed in, lying on his side to make room for Peter. “Did you have a moment like that, your first night in Dauntless? Coming from Candor, it must have been a big change.” He smiled, self-satisfied, until Peter remembered he’d lied about that.

Peter climbed into bed, making himself the little spoon. He felt safe, able to see a path to the door. “My first night in Dauntless, the other kids all sat around telling ghost stories, trying to scare each other. It wasn’t until the third or fourth one when I realized they weren’t true. And nobody was getting punished for making things up.”

“And you’ve been making things up ever since, hm?” Caleb kissed the back of his neck.

“The whole idea of truth is bullshit,” Peter said. “Everyone remembers things differently, or feels differently about the same thing.”

“Or, sometimes, there are things you can’t accomplish by telling the truth,” Caleb said. “Like the ghost stories - you probably learned more about each other’s fears than if you’d sat in a circle and made everyone admit what they were afraid of.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was the point.”

“So what do you think we should give them?” Caleb said. “The truth, or a good story?”

“Give who?” He wanted to assume that Caleb meant Jeanine and whoever else was listening in, but Caleb had a way of messing with his intuition.

“Every corner of the tower is bugged,” Caleb said. “Jeanine is desperate to figure out whether we’re conspiring or just having sex. She can’t tell whether we both surrendered as part of a master plan, or if we’re just a couple of idiots. It’s driving her crazy.”

“And you’re having way too much fun with that to settle the question,” Peter said.

“You are, too.” 

“Can’t lie about that,” Peter said. “But what she wants from _me_ is a way to lure Tris in.” In fact, he’d promised to give Jeanine one, but that detail wasn’t important. 

“And you can’t think of one? No, you’re you, you’ve thought of twelve, and half of them would work. It’s the question I asked you before - you can’t decide whether to tell her the truth or send Erudite spinning its wheels until Tris can get back on the offensive.” He covered Peter’s hand with his own. “Well, either way, I’m in. Tap once for the truth, or twice for an epic lie.”

Caleb was right: Peter couldn’t decide whether the truth was dangerous or useful here. He forced himself to think it through. Jeanine must have been expecting them to lie, or at least to misdirect her; that was how everyone outside Candor seemed to operate. And a childhood in Candor had taught him that the truth, carefully pruned, could be more misleading than fiction. Besides, Peter had a much better chance of getting out of this mess alive if everyone thought he was playing for their team. He held his breath and tapped Caleb’s hip once.

“Okay,” Caleb said, his voice betraying no emotion. He ran his hands over Peter’s chest, and Peter wasn’t sure how long this conversation would last before it turned into fucking. He wanted to restrain himself, to test his own willpower, to tease Caleb with indifference. But torturing the Erudite spies with improvised pornography was even more fun. 

“So it’s settled,” Peter said. “Do I get to fuck you now?”

He could feel Caleb go rigid with shock for a moment. But there was a smile in Caleb’s voice by the time he said, “Um, yes, except I’m all out of butter.”

“There’s soap in the bathroom,” Peter said. “Get a lot, more than you think you need.”

Peter lay in the warm spot that Caleb left behind, filling his lungs with Caleb’s scent. It was fun to watch Caleb walk away, his pale ass jiggling as he walked, and fun to watch him return, half-hard with anticipation. Peter propped himself onto his elbows, but Caleb said, “No, don’t get up.” He sat between Peter’s legs, balancing both soap-filled palms upward, and for a moment, Peter wasn’t sure Caleb understood which one of them was going to be bottoming. But Caleb spread one handful of soap over Peter’s cock. The thick, slippery liquid ran down over Peter’s balls, thighs, and stomach, and Caleb scooped it back over Peter’s thickening cock in smooth upward strokes. 

Caleb lay back and used the rest of the soap on himself, fingering himself messily. “I’m getting jealous of your hand,” Peter said.

Caleb hovered over Peter on his knees, soapy hands on Peter’s chest, their cocks brushing. “Can we do it like this? Me on top, but you inside me.”

They could, but it took some trial and error, shifting Caleb around until he could lower himself onto Peter’s cock, and then a moment of confusion while they figured out that Caleb would have to do most of the work. Peter sat up halfway, steadying Caleb’s hips so he wouldn’t slam down too hard. He felt a little trapped, but the fear steadied him, gave him something to fight for, kept him from coming too soon. Caleb was so beautiful that Peter had to shut his eyes, to peek through his lashes at his tight pink nipples, his teeth gritting into his lower lip, his bobbing cock. 

As if by instinct, Caleb grasped his own cock, stroking himself until he came all over Peter’s chest. But the release seemed to free him up to ride Peter harder, to clench tighter around Peter’s cock. Peter fought to make himself last, but he didn’t have any resistance left. Just before he came, he locked his eyes with Caleb’s, so Caleb’s soft and satisfied smile sent him over the edge.

Sex had drained whatever energy Caleb had left, and he drifted off to sleep after a few drowsy words of affection. Peter lay next to him for a few minutes but felt wired and inquisitive, miles from any dreams he’d want to experience. He spread the covers over Caleb and went to the bathroom to clean up. Chilly and restless, he put on his uniform pants and undershirt. He heard a crackle from inside his jacket, where he’d shoved his security earpiece. It wasn’t flashing, which meant nobody had tried to reach him. Of course they hadn’t - he was exactly where Jeanine wanted him.

Dauntless security guards weren’t supposed to be able to program their own earpieces. Their Erudite team leaders controlled them with a remote device, the size of Peter’s big toe, that clicked through the available channels and locked the earpiece. Fortunately, Peter had swiped one that morning and had spent a few minutes in a supply closet figuring out how it worked. 

Mindful of the cameras, Peter took Caleb’s reading tablet from his desk and brought it into the still-steamy bathroom. He sat on a soft towel on the bathroom floor, back against the door of the shower stall, and forced patience upon himself, skimming the opening chapter of a novel that Caleb had marked as a favorite, a story from centuries ago that imagined a future in which humanity had thrived and multiplied, had traveled across outer space. Fiction was still strange to him, decadent, like letting his mind take a hot shower and fall asleep damp and naked on soft sheets.

With the tablet balanced in his lap and his eyes focused on its screen, Peter surreptitiously clicked the earpiece controller. He was lucky to hit on the right channel just as Jeanine’s spy said, “...sex in the shower.” Peter braced himself for some quality entertainment. 

“They talked for a while. Nothing interesting at first, unless you enjoy listening to teenage boys wax philosophic on the nature of truth. That did lead into a little relevant discussion, but all they gave away is that they _are_ working together. They’re not stupid, and they know they’re being monitored. Peter intends to follow through on his promise to provide a strategy for luring Tris Prior here. What’s not clear is whether he intends to give us useful information or send us chasing our tails.”

“They didn’t make that decision?” Jeanine’s voice sounded flat and irritated. It was Peter’s first confirmation that she was in the room.

“I think they did, but they communicated with hand signals under a blanket,” the spy said.

Jeanine sighed emphatically. “I wish we had options other than trusting the two of them.” She dismissed the spy. The feed remained open, but all Peter could hear was the ambient buzz of an empty room. He clicked his earpiece back to its default channel and turned his attention toward the novel he’d begun, toward futures that never were, toward possibilities that still remained, no matter how overdue they’d become.

**5\. Dauntless**

Nobody could have predicted that Peter’s suggestion would work this well. Peter and Caleb had assumed they would have a few days to lurk with their ears open, vandalize surveillance equipment, and fuck on every floor of the Erudite tower. They got eighteen hours, because Beatrice turned herself in after one round of mind-controlled suicide drones threatened to hurl themselves over a ledge. Caleb wasn’t sure what annoyed him more: Beatrice’s unfailing talent for busting up his plans with demands for attention, or Erudite’s decision to mind-control Beatrice’s best friend and an eight-year-old boy in the first round instead of toying with her emotions gradually and buying everyone some time. 

Jeanine made Peter and Caleb watch through a solid glass panel as she tortured Beatrice through the series of tests necessary to open the box. The test simulation - Beatrice’s reality - was projected above her, so they watched that, too. Caleb reminded himself continually that it was only pain, that she’d suffered worse, that her Dauntless training had inflicted worse on her. Still, he felt a piece of himself die whenever she cried out. 

He glanced at Peter when he couldn’t stand to look at Beatrice anymore. Peter, for all his pretensions of near-sociopathic carelessness, reacted physically to Beatrice’s torment. Maybe it was his Candor upbringing: he’d never been taught to hold his feelings in. Watching Peter react made it easier for Caleb to bury his own emotions under a veneer of calculated indifference. It was the most natural role for him to play, the one he’d been forced to cultivate his entire life.

Beatrice took a long time to pass the Dauntless test, swinging from cables as she tried to save their mother from a burning house. At the sight of his mother’s face, Caleb’s Stoicism almost crumbled, but he pulled himself back from the moment and made himself look at it from another angle. His mother’s appearance now resided in the Erudite memory cloud. He could interact with her in simulations whenever he wanted, and though it wouldn’t be her in the truest sense, it might be enough to ease his grief.

Beatrice breezed through Candor and Abnegation. She blundered in the first stage of the Erudite test, but once she caught on, she nailed it. The test was taking its toll on her body, though, and Peter called out for a break. To Caleb’s surprise, Jeanine powered down the simulation without hesitating.

“She hasn’t passed Abnegation yet,” Peter said.

“She did when she saved your life,” Jeanine said. She looked out at Beatrice, ignoring them.

It was only half the answer, and Jeanine didn’t seem to realize it. Beatrice had passed Abnegation when she’d saved Peter _for Caleb._

“Good work,” Jeanine whispered as she dismissed Caleb along with Peter. He couldn’t tell if she was really buying his act, or if she was trying to lure him into a false sense of security. Regardless, if there was ever a time for paranoia, it was now. 

“How’s your nose?” Caleb asked in the hallway. Beatrice had shoved Peter up against the glass when she’d resisted entering the simulation.

“Fine. It was just a little blood. She went for maximum drama and minimum injury.”

“Well, then she did a good job,” Caleb said. “It looked like she slammed you pretty hard.”

“That’s the thing about bloody noses,” Peter said, turning a corner decisively. “The capillaries break really easily, and the blood freaks everyone out. It’s a really good way to stop someone from fighting you and keep anyone else from trying.”

“I didn’t realize there was a science to fighting,” Caleb said. “But I guess there would be.”

Peter took Caleb on the scenic route to wherever they were going. The halls of the tower looked the same, for the most part, but growing up in Abnegation had accustomed Caleb to uniformity. He’d developed a habit for identifying subtle changes that prevented him from getting lost. Still, there was a wisdom to the homey haphazardness of Amity or the Factionless camp. When things looked like what they were, it became a shortcut to understanding their significance and function. The more he traveled, the more he was convinced that people and institutions that embraced conformity were hiding their ugliness under clean, nondescript surfaces.

The train of thought gave Caleb extra pleasure when Peter unlocked the door to a residential room. Once inside, Caleb laughed and said, “Oh, this is _yours.”_ It was no surprise that Erudite had quartered Peter privately; one of Erudite’s precepts was the belief that everyone was entitled to a private space for learning and reflection. Most people kept their rooms neat, sparse, and impersonal, but Peter, in the week or so he’d lived there, had let it devolve into disorder. Dirty uniforms on the floor, bed unmade, the remains of a smuggled snack decomposing on the bedside table. Peter had also collected an impressive array of pilfered tools and electronic widgets, which he’d strewn carelessly around the room. Intentional or not, the mess ensured that if anyone searched Peter’s room, they’d have no idea what they’d found.

Peter kissed Caleb’s cheek and whispered, “I jammed the audio surveillance, but I couldn’t do anything about the video feed.”

“So we’ll have to hide under the covers if we want to talk?” If he’d observed out loud that even with the sound out, their overseers could read their lips, he might have given those overseers too many ideas.

“Anything to get you into bed,” Peter said.

Caleb pulled Peter in for a rough, messy kiss, but Peter jerked back. “Careful,” Peter said. “My nose.”

“I thought you said it was fine,” Caleb said.

“It’s _fine,_ ” Peter said. “But it still hurts when you shove your face against it.”

Caleb hung his head and backed away. “I’m sorry for kissing you.” He knew he was screwing with Peter’s emotions, but faced with rejection, he didn’t know what to do except retreat into himself.

Peter stepped forward so their chests almost touched and ran his palm down Caleb’s face. “I want you to kiss me,” he said. “Just, gently.”

Caleb obliged him with a teasing brush of his lips. “You don’t like surprises, do you?” 

Peter smirked and shrugged.

“No, it’s just - you do this a lot. Shy away when I surprise you, and then tell me what you want. Or make me say what I want, even when I think it’s obvious.”

“What do you want, for me to show you where the bad man touched me?” Peter rolled his eyes. “I’ve had some bad shit happen, but not that. It’s a Candor thing. They drill it into you pretty early not to touch anyone unless they invite you to, and to ask clearly for the affection you want.” He grinned. “It got me pretty far in Dauntless because they didn’t expect it.”

Caleb carded his fingers through Peter’s hair, relieved that he didn’t resist. “Then tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”

Peter pressed the crown of his head into Caleb’s hand like a cat stretching up for a scratch between the ears. “I want you to take off your clothes and get into bed, so we can get the important stuff out of the way, and I can make it stop turning around and around in my head like a siren that won’t fucking shut off.”

Sarcasm teased the tip of Caleb’s tongue. _Are you sure that isn’t just head trauma?_ But under Peter’s Dauntless bravado, it sounded like he was asking for comfort, and Caleb wanted to be strong enough, for once, to give him that. He undressed and crawled under the covers. Peter joined him in short order, twining his arms and legs around Caleb’s body, holding him there like a network of suspended cables.

“I know where Four is being held,” Peter said, his lips brushing Caleb’s shoulder as if the video surveillance could penetrate sheets and blankets. “If we can tip him off somehow -”

“What can he do?” Caleb said.

“Calm Tris down so she passes Amity,” Peter said.

“Or rile her up more,” Caleb said. “I’ve known Beatrice all her life. It doesn’t matter how Divergent she is, there’s no way she passes Amity. She’s leaving here dead no matter what, unless we - I don’t know. Unless we do something.”

“Unless we kill her ourselves,” Peter said.

“What, like, fake her death?” It wasn’t actually a bad idea.

“I can swipe a paralytic from the infirmary,” Peter said. “It’ll be like _Romeo and Juliet,_ only without the stupid ending.”

Caleb laughed dryly. “You’ve read Shakespeare.”

“I told you, when I got to Dauntless, I read all the made-up stories I could get my hands on,” Peter said. “But that’s beside the point.” 

“It’s exactly the point,” Caleb said. “Because you’re Divergent. You’re Divergent, and you’ve known it all along, and you - come on, Candor, you love lying, but you’re shit at it.”

“Only a little,” Peter said, but with a tinge of pride in his voice.

“It wasn’t the Shakespeare,” Caleb said. “Or the tinkering with the surveillance equipment, although that was a pretty good tip-off. It was the puzzle locks on the doors. The retinal scans should give you all the access you need, but you did the puzzle instead when we came in here. And you shouldn’t be able to. Those locks - they’re an initiation test. Only Erudite are supposed to have the focus and problem-solving capability to use them. I saw one kid wash out after sleeping on the floor outside his room for two nights in a row, because he couldn’t line up the shapes to get inside. But you - you figured it out, just to prove you could.”

“I figured it out because I had to,” Peter said. “Jeanine told me that I could go anywhere I wanted if I could solve the puzzle, and -”

“And she’s great at pushing people’s buttons,” Caleb finished. “She got you. Don’t feel bad about that.”

“Don’t feel _bad?_ I had a fucking gun to my head today. I thought - but Tris -”

“She couldn’t go through with it,” Caleb said. “Not in the sim, and not in real life. That’s - that’s something.”

“Yeah, she’s - well, whatever. Do you think the puzzle key works on holding cells?”

“‘No door shall be closed to those who seek knowledge.’” The Erudite precepts had been drilled into Caleb’s brain. 

“Okay, then I can get Four out,” Peter said. “I can probably get into the security control center and give him retina scan access once he’s out, too, so he can get Tris out of danger.”

“While I do what?” Caleb said.

“While you convince Jeanine that we’re not up to a damn thing,” Peter said. “You’re right that I’m a bad liar, but you’re a great one. Make yourself her right-hand man. Distract her if she gets in the way.”

“That doesn’t seem like much.” Caleb might not have been brave, but he’d hoped to be more of a hero. 

“But if you do it right, it could be everything,” Peter said.

“I can go to Beatrice,” Caleb said. “Now, while she’s resting. I can make it sound like I’ve totally betrayed her, but at the same time - we have all these little secret codes. Brother and sister stuff. I can drop hints and make sure she does her part.”

“You manipulative little bastard,” Peter said. It was his highest form of praise. He pulled Caleb up against him tighter. “Don’t go yet, though. I don’t want you to go yet.”

“Then I don’t want to,” Caleb said. He kissed Peter’s neck, as if a kiss could keep them safe forever.

**6\. Damaged**

Something about the light in the Bureau of Genetic Research made Peter unable to sleep. He was trying to see it as a benefit, an opportunity to explore the place when nobody would notice him or grow suspicious. At least not among his band of escaped renegades - he didn’t question that someone in a windowless room had a surveillance camera trained on him whenever he wandered off alone. So he respected locked doors, at least for now. His goal was not to break in anywhere, but to create a mental map of the place. Since the people in charge here seemed determined to keep their new guests in the dark as much as possible, that felt like greater mischief than picking locks.

They’d assumed it would be the Dauntless who’d break out of the experiment. They hadn’t been ready for Erudite.

He strolled down a hallway lined with alcoves, some blocked with bent and dusty metal grates, some filled with rows of peeling plastic chairs. Some of the grated-off spaces had counters and plumbing fixtures, like they’d once been used to prepare and serve food. He tried to imagine the corridor as it had once been, mobbed with people and flooded with daylight. People traveling from one place to another in the great, wide world, so much larger than he’d conceived of. Peter wanted to see all of that world, to escape from the speck on the map that Chicago had turned out to be. To tell people what had been done to him and everyone around him, and to show what he’d become in spite of that. To leave his mark.

He heard footsteps behind him and ducked into an alcove. Peering around the wall, he saw that it was Four who was following him. He waved guilelessly. 

“What are you doing here?” Four asked, clearly not buying Peter’s innocence.

“Out for a walk. Couldn’t sleep.” He slid down the wall to sit on the floor. 

It would have been rude for Four not to join him, or to stay standing, looming over him. Four got the message and sat down beside him. “Me neither,” Four said. “This is the kind of place you walk around in a nightmare. The type where you’re more anxious than scared. You’re lost, you’re late, you have to take a test, there was something vital that you were supposed to bring with you and you can’t remember what it is.”

“I was going to say that the lights give me a headache,” Peter said. “But it’s the same thing.”

“The lights are even worse in this section.” Four squinted upward foolishly. “They flicker. Like they’re haunted.”

“Or infested with bugs.”

Four made a disgusted face. “You’re probably right. For all their talk about scientific advancement, this building is pretty run down.”

“It almost makes me miss Erudite,” Peter said, although there was no _almost_ about it. In a short time, he had grown accustomed to his private little room, to the sleek glass and metal, to screens that lit up and answered all his questions. And then told him stories until his imagination felt sated and peaceful. He missed Dauntless, too, of course: the entertainments and adventures around every corner, the invitations to wear out his nervous energy with a fight or a leap. They’d appealed to different sides of him, but they’d both assured that he’d never been bored.

“Then maybe you should have stayed there,” Four said with a Tris-like sneer.

“No. I had to see what was on the other side.”

“Or follow Caleb,” Four said, not kindly, but not without self-awareness.

“I would have come with you even if we hadn’t been able to save him,” Peter said. “You know that, right?”

Four looked away and gnawed his lip like he hadn’t known and remained unconvinced. “But you love him.”

“I - it wasn’t supposed to be like that,” Peter said. “He was hot, and he wanted it, he wanted it so much, and then - he liked me. He liked me, and he keeps liking me, and I don’t know why. I started out taking advantage of that, but now, I’m like one of those bugs trapped in the lights. I’m drawn to him. And I could fly away, and maybe I need to, but I’d rather just - just cling to the light.” He stopped to take in Four’s look of bewilderment and say, mock-defensively, “What?”

“It’s so strange to hear Caleb described like that,” Four said. “I guess I don’t really know him. I only know what Tris has told me. And she, you know, she sees what she wants to see in people. I’m not sure why I took her word on him.”

Peter shrugged. “Because you like her.”

Four smiled as if picturing her. “Yeah, but also, it’s hard to get over how he betrayed us. How he sided with Jeanine.”

“What if I told you he didn’t?” Peter said. “Because he -” Peter took a breath, remembering lessons from Candor, ways of telling the truth so it had meaning, ways to go beyond the reporting of facts. “Caleb is the best liar I’ve ever met. The best _actor._ It’s not a surprise, the way he grew up, how much he had to hide, to get by. We needed to have Jeanine think she’d won one of us over. And Caleb, he had her eating up everything he said. All the little diversions, pieces of false information that gave us time to sneak in. Jeanine never would have trusted me, but she should have. Jeanine never doubted Caleb, and that’s a big part of what took her down.”

Four looked like he was going to erupt in anger for a moment, but he steeled himself. “And not telling me and Tris? That was part of the act?”

“Never telling Tris,” Peter said. “She needs to believe what she believes about him. Right now, all she does is hate him and pity him.”

Four caught on. “And if she knew, she’d be afraid of him.”

“She doesn’t have time to conquer a new fear,” Peter said. “None of us do.”

**7\. Divergent**

Caleb’s sister was dead.

He was alive. Aside from a few fading bruises from an argument with Beatrice that had ended in violence (hers, and now he missed even her violence), he was unharmed. 

He was alone. His sister was dead; his parents were dead. Peter was in the city somewhere, probably alive. His memory might or might not have been intact. 

Caleb waited.

Cara and Christina were the first to reunite with him. They looked at him first like they’d seen a ghost, then like they were furious at him for failing. He had to explain about Beatrice. After a moment of silence like an ill wind, Christina pulled the other two of them into a hug. They sat in the dormitory for what felt like a week but could not have been more than hours, keeping vigil, trapped in a holding pattern. Caleb dug under Peter’s mattress and found a small stolen library: an interactive atlas, a book on the psychology of memory, something called _1984_ that looked distressing and might or might not have been fiction, and _The Decameron._

He was a couple of pages in when Cara asked what he was reading. “A book about people telling stories to each other while the world dies around them,” he said.

“Can you read it out loud?” she asked. “There’s something comforting about being read to.” 

They passed the book around like it was a pilfered bottle of Abnegation moonshine, flipping through the crisp, fragile pages to a random story. Occasionally, someone heard voices and joined them: strangers seeking refuge from the chaotic halls of the Bureau. 

Time passed.

Four broke up the party when he burst in, with Peter on his heels. He had a bag on his shoulder, which he dropped loudly when he saw Caleb. “What the fuck?”

Christina, merciful and quick-thinking, explained. Four crumpled to the floor, weeping. Peter reeled backward, confused, and Caleb rushed around Four to comfort him instead. Peter’s confusion intensified when Caleb touches his face. “Which one are you?” Peter said. “Four told me a bunch of names when we were in the truck, but they’re all jumbled together.”

“Caleb,” Caleb said patiently.

Peter blinked at him. “I don’t think he mentioned you.”

“I don’t think he was expecting me to survive,” Caleb said. “I think he was hoping to spare you.”

Peter took Caleb by the wrist and pulled it slowly down to waist level. “Were we -”

Caleb kissed his lips softly. 

“I’m not faking,” Peter said. “I get the feeling I’d tell you if I were. I can’t remember anything. I can’t even _try_ to remember anything.”

Caleb leaned his head against Peter’s chest, and for the first time today, he cried.

They stayed in the dormitory that night, although Caleb planned to return to Chicago in the morning. Peter wanted to go with him, and Caleb wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Still, he reached for Peter’s hand as he tried to fall asleep. Peter squeezed it, a gesture of tender and unironic affection that he never would have risked if his memory had been intact.

Enough people wanted to go to Chicago in the morning that there was a bus idling outside. Passengers had already claimed most of the seats near the front, so Caleb and Peter climbed a few steps to the platform at the rear and shared a two-person bench that faced sideways. “We were in a cornfield together once, weren’t we?” Peter said.

Caleb laughed shyly. “Yes, we were.”

“I’ve been having flashes all morning,” Peter said. “Small moments, tied to people. There’s one with a woman who I think was my mother, tiptoeing in a kitchen to get ice cream. And one where I’m beating up this girl. I hate her, and I don’t remember why. And one where I’m lying in a cornfield with you, with people singing in the distance.”

“Your memories are coming back,” Caleb said, and a persistent tendril of joy shoved past all his grief. “You’re coming back.”

Peter’s memories took their time returning. It was months before he had his whole life back, and in the meantime, he hardly slept, trapped in old traumas that must have felt like fresh wounds. But at his core, he was still Peter. By the time Peter remembered enough to accuse Caleb of sticking with him out of a Stiff sense of duty, Caleb was certain that he’d done so out of love. That was a good thing, because they’d settled together in a two-bedroom apartment in one of the high-rise buildings that overlooked the Lake, and it would have been hard to switch. Chicago was an open city now, not an experiment site, and people were moving from other parts of the Midwest, as word spread of good jobs and housing for the genetically damaged.

Caleb returned to his research, focusing on the patterns of mutational genetic repair unique to the Chicago experiment. It was a mystery that would take him the rest of his life to solve. 

Peter read voraciously while his memory recovered, then kept up the habit, but he became aimless once he was healthy enough to work. To keep busy, he helped a group of former Bureau employees who were rescuing and rehabilitating kids from the Fringe. With his mental health fragile from the memory loss, they wouldn’t allow him on excursions to the Fringe, so they put him on babysitting duty. He took to it, and within a year, he’d been entrusted with a classroom full of small children: some Fringe refugees, some city kids from Chicago or elsewhere who were pretty traumatized, themselves. 

“All they want to do is paint, and listen to stories, and run around,” Peter explained. “So we have the same hobbies, pretty much. Besides, they’re so little, I’m not worried about hurting them. If an adult makes me mad, I’m sorry, but it’s hard not to punch them in the face. A little kid, though, I couldn’t do that. Never.”

“It’s good to know there are some lines you won’t cross,” Caleb teased. 

“I used to think there weren’t,” Peter said. He stood with his back to Caleb, staring out at the water. “I used to think I’d do _anything._ I used to look out at the Lake from Candor and say, ‘Someday I’m going to jump in there and swim to the other side.’ Whoever was nearby had to tell me it was impossible, because Faction rules prohibited you from letting anyone persist in false beliefs. But in my mind, I was always like, ‘Watch me.’”

Caleb imagined Peter diving into the endless water, bobbing above and below the surface like an extinct sea animal until he crossed the horizon line, invisible. He came up behind Peter and wrapped his arms around Peter’s chest, as if they could prevent him from disappearing. Peter kissed Caleb’s wrist. “Let me know if you decide to go swimming,” Caleb said. 

“In there? It’s freezing. And full of toxic waste.” Peter laughed at his own suggestion of fear. “Sounds like a challenge.”

“We’re pretty good at finding our way back,” Caleb said. 

“Are you saying you’d go in there with me?”

“I’m saying I’d help you build a boat.” Caleb kissed Peter’s neck, and Peter keened back into him, eyes closed, like this was the beginning of their next scheme.


End file.
